I expected this from China, but not so soon.

In short, the U.S. can't defend Taiwan unless it is willing to risk getting nuked.

It was supposed to be the general's personal opinion only. However, if it was only his opinion, he would be off either in retirement or getting himself "re-educated" right now. Also, the Chinese government would have denounced his words. This is clearly a threat by Peking for us to stand back as they take over the last bastion of free China.

I had expected this, and talked about it in earlier posts, but the Chinese seem to be moving faster than I thought they would. I didn't think they would go after Taiwan until a new president takes office here. Perhaps they believe they need to move before we are done with Iraq.

It may be that before the year is out we will all wake up to news reports of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Are we willing to risk everything for Taiwan? That can be avoided if we make it abundantly clear to the Chinese that they would, indeed, have to get through our fleet to get to Formosa.

And it might not hurt to formally withdraw our recognition of the PRC as the legitimate government of China and return that recognition to Taiwan, inasmuch as China is pursuing a policy of military aggression against it's neighbor states.

You know, this all started with President Carter formally recognizing the PRC in the first place. We are still paying for his presidency.